


He Walks In Beauty

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unknown narrator, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little glimpse of young Dean through a stranger's eyes...</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Walks In Beauty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts), [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts).



> My version of a little Get Well card for my perfectly lovely ladies, Lochinvar and Linden, who never ever fail to make me smile even when I am feeling my worst. I hope you both get to feeling much, much better, very soon. Tons of love.
> 
> This little thing was inspired by a gorgeous specimen walking down the street of my hometown that just screamed Dean Winchester at sweet sixteen, complete with torn jeans, plaid shirt around his waist, and a bandage on the back of his hand. I nearly caused an accident staring...

He was beautiful.

Except that wasn't a big enough or complex enough idea to encompass all that he was.

He'd appeared one day, around dusk a couple of weeks ago, hanging off the side of an older man who'd pulled him with sure but gruffly gentle motions from the passenger seat of a shiny black classic car. Impala, '67, her son Tyler had said. Because at thirteen he was into hot, pretty cars. It was the stage that came just before hot, pretty girls. The girls hadn't quite grown into their curves yet, but by the time they did, her son and all his friends would have a preconceived appreciation for them, guided by the kind of linear beauty that sat sedately across the street in the graveled driveway.

The slightly grizzled looking man, who had been taking most of this younger one's weight that night, had disappeared a day or two later, not to be seen again since. There was also a skinny, dark haired sprite about the place who was a grade behind her son in school. He was illusive as a ghost, though, coming and going from the house in the morning and afternoon, rarely appearing outside and never just to play, only to lean against the side of the house for a little with his nose buried in a book.

There were lots of kids his age in this neighborhood. None of them ever stopped to ask him to join their games.

He had a name. Tyler had told her at dinner a few days ago. Something with an 's'…Seth…Sal…Sam. Yes, Sam. That was it. Plain, nondescript, stoic. Like what little she'd seen of the kid himself. And the older one…Dean. That was easier to bring to mind because everything about the kid screamed classic 'rebel without a cause,' from his artfully mussed, spiky blonde hair, to  his torn jeans and steel toed boots that were worn in a way that wasn't for show. Just like the car he was leaning against right now. It was obviously well loved, kept up with care but not for the showroom. That piece of growly gorgeousness had never felt the reflected heat of glittering spotlights on her glossy skin.

He had his legs crossed at the ankle, one hand resting at his hip on the slightly up-cut curve of the car's body that swept back to her trunk. He was holding a beer between two fingers, drinking casually, condensation from the afternoon heat running down the amber glass and splotching the thigh of his jeans. He wasn't old enough to be drinking, she was sure of that, but something in the corners of his grimly set mouth and the hooded look in his ever moving eyes said he really didn't care, and he dared anyone to challenge him on it.

That was something else about him. He looked completely at rest, almost languid with his hips canted just so and his plaid shirt tied loose and careless around his waist, leaving him bare chested in the gold afternoon light. That was all a show, though. His eyes were scanning, taking everything in, assessing. His body. Well. That was a whole other matter. He was standing still, yes, but something in his stance said that he could spring into action at a moment's notice, faster than thought. 

Still. Even with all that, she knew she wasn't seeing him at his best.

There was a bandage on the back of the hand that rested on the car, and she'd seem him out running the other morning in the cool, grey hours before most of the rest of the world came alive. He'd been favoring his left leg by the time he reached the drive and doubled over, clinging to the fender of the car for support, heaving huge breaths in and out; and it was obvious by the tight annoyance in his face that he wasn't accustomed to being so winded.

She wondered what he did, where he'd come from, that he had learned to expect so much from himself at such a young age; what he'd seen that had put such a jaded, predatory look in his clear, green eyes.

He was beautiful, yes, but in the cold, hard way a diamond was, with the same flickering, secret fire hidden below the surface. She imagined the world had tested itself against him and been cut on his sharp, unbreakable edges.

The street was starting to stir with the activity of kids coming home from school, walking, running, riding bikes. His watchful gaze tracked and followed all of it. She watched as flocks of kids steered around him, unthinking, staying out of his space, not even aware of him.

A little way down the street, the younger one, Sam, came ambling along. He carried the same pocket of silent stillness with him, creating a void the rest of the kids just flowed around without thought. His wasn't self-imposed, though. His was sullen, worn like armor that was too heavy and didn't fit right. 

He was scrawny and underfed, to her critical mother's eye, but there was an immature grace in his movements that she was sure would bloom one day into something very like his older brother's. He had a sweetness in his face, too, that may be able to counter the cynical look his brother wore, may be able to overtake it before it took him, down the road.

He paused at the end of the their drive, having spied his brother, the sullen carapace falling away. His face split in a wide grin, bringing out dimples cut so deep she could see them clearly even at this distance. That undercurrent of sweetness flooded his eyes and spilled over, and he covered the last few feet at a dead run, barreling into his brother so that he jolted a little at the sudden impact and loss of air to his lungs.

Sam's arms twined around his brother's ribs, settling into every groove and curve of his body like he was born to fit just there. There was no hesitation, either, as one of Dean's arms wrapped around Sam's shoulders while the other set aside his beer bottle and then threaded into the boy's soft, dark hair at the base of his skull and tucked his head in and down to rest, firmly held, in the crook of Dean's shoulder.

There was something so poignant and sharp in this simple gesture of affection that she felt cut to the bone and breathless with shock. She felt like an interloper now, witness to this painfully intimate moment.

Even at thirteen, still occasionally taken by little-boy moments of hunger for affection, Tyler would never have allowed that kind of closeness from either of his siblings, or even from herself, his own mother. These boys were tangled together in a way that pushed past love like it was so much frippery and lip service, and went straight down to the core of something that no language on earth had yet invented words to describe or name.

Dean dipped his head, pressed his mouth to his little brother's hair, and murmured something that caused the tiny corner of a smile to peek from where Sam's face was still burrowed against his brother's shoulder.

It struck her then, the completeness in the moment.

All that predation in Dean's gaze, all the restrained motion, the constant watchful waiting—it was all for this. With his brother tucked against him, he was at rest, true rest, body gone languid with the release of tension, to curve and wrap around his little brother's form.

His gaze lifted momentarily, going straight to hers like he knew she'd been watching the entire time.

She felt like a rabbit in a snare under those sharp, clear eyes. His gaze held nothing and everything all at once, acknowledgement that she had seen what she'd seen and ambivalence for the same; also a promise of danger if she interfered, tried in any way to come between him and what was his. And Sam was most definitely his.

He turned away, eyes sliding like water away from her, completely indifferent. He nudged his brother a little, ruffled his hair gently, and steered them both toward the house.

She stared after them, shaken on so many levels it left her brain adrift and blank, running in safe-mode with no external connection until it had time to process all that it had seen. She turned on her heel, walking back up the drive in a daze, completely forgetting the mail she had gone out to the box to retrieve.


End file.
